Texas Tech Coach Joey McGuire Pokes Longhorns: 'Everything Runs Through Lubbock!'
About an hour after Texas Tech captured a stunning 37-34 win over the much-ballyhooed Texas Longhorns in overtime on Saturday in Lubbock, I send a congratulatory text to first-year Red Raiders coach Joey McGuire.
My message included a couple of exclamation marks. After reviewing his post-game comments - so full of confidence and pride and maybe some purposeful cage-rattling directed at No. 22-ranked Texas - I expected a couple of exclamation marks in return.
"Thank you,'' McGuire typed back.
Maybe McGuire, the legendary Texas high school coach getting his first crack at running a college program, was all out of piss and vinegar (and bluster?) after his postgame celebration with his Red Raiders and after a media session in which he took a victory lap around the Longhorns.
What did he say to his team in the locker room?
“I told you (the Longhorns) were gonna break, and they did,” said McGuire before later adding, “Someone turn up some damn music!”
What did he say to the media about the downed rival?
“A reporter asked me at the end, ‘What’s it mean to win this game and beat Texas?’ I said it doesn’t mean anything to beat Texas, we’re 1–0 in the Big 12, that’s what it means.''
In other words, this outcome isn't about the state of the loser. It's about the state of the winner, the 3-1 Red Raiders.
What did he say about the possibility that Texas might no longer have Tech on its schedule?
"There’s a reason they don't want to - it happened today,” declared McGuire, before taking a sort of "They're-a-basketball-school'' poke at Texas. “You know, have a much better chance of selling out their basketball arena when they play Texas Tech in Austin. They normally have a better chance of doing that.”
This marks two "signature'' victories under McGuire so far, both coming against ranked teams (Houston and Texas), both coming in OT. These outcomes are the result of a spectacular level of resiliency - the Red Raiders were once down 31-14 in this game - but it's also about the grind. McGuire is 51 and did not ride the gravy train to get here; he is only a few years removed from his 20-year stint coaching high school, grading papers, doing laundry, changing lives.
Maybe that's not "exclamation point'' stuff to some. But for McGuire, the end result always has been. And now it is again.
"I’m telling y’all right now: The country’s gonna find out,'' McGuire boasted, "that everything runs through Lubbock!”
Exclamation point.
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